308 Far Future, Ch. 18 – The Verdict is Death (1/2)

The room also had quite a few spideroids in it, festooning it in even more webs than before, although there didn't seem to be a queen here.

”Agent Rantha, no need to engage. We will be there shortly,” the sergeant's voice sounded in my head with a crackle of interference.

”You're too loud. Don't worry about it. This is what I do for a living.” I drew down with Paten, aiming carefully for a One Shot, and unloaded the Sun Strike on a hapless man-sized spideroid crawling slowly up the opposite wall, nailing it right through the brain cluster.

Paten hummed, Karma clicked over, a Slot opened, energized, resonated with the other Rather Impressive Soulbound Weapon I was holding, and kicked up and open as harmonious power ignited on him.

My Vajra clicked the indicator. Tats glowed under the skin of my hands as the Lightning Gauntlets lit up and began to throw power directly into the power cell in the back of his Compressed stock.

Hot Hard Light began to pulse out twenty times a second, girt in Bane and Vivic fires, the equal of a heavy blaster built into the support of Paten's autobow. Ice-aligned crystals neutralized the waste heat. Actually, Paten got colder the more I shot him.

Pouring the energy of the Lightning Gauntlets into him greatly extended his firing period, from five seconds to almost twenty seconds of autofire. I only had to make sure to spread the shots out as much as possible, as consecutive auto-hits with banefire would be treated as one hit within a six-second time frame. Hit one spider, then another, and go back to the first, however...

I dove through the wall, holding the trigger on full auto, and Whirlwinded.

The medium spider directly above the door got its head split as I leapt into the room spinning, somersaulted, and came down hard on two spiders on the narrow stairs, sliced through another couple on the walls... and Paten's pulses of HHL painted the room in streaks of golden laser light surrounded in multi-colored flames.

Each pulse was aiming for a smaller spider. 1-10 + 18 +2-12 +6d6 Sneak Attack blew them apart as the unwhite fires cut through the gloaming and the HHL scored a wound... and the bonus damage did the rest.

Golden swathes of force blurred in all directions as I kept spinning, moving, reaching. My Dexterity was in excess of 30 even now, and everything moved in arrow time, slow motion, while my Trembling Domain gave me a 360-no scope shooting.

I hosed down everything, although one shot often wasn't enough to kill the big ones unless it landed perfectly, but that was fine.

They didn't get a chance to swarm me, as all the smaller spiders were exploding around me as I spun, and I was the one charging the bigger ones, cutting, sliding, skipping, bouncing, working the angles to target all of them, holding the trigger down. HHL bounced off durasteel and lightly scored the plascrete, doing basically nothing as I wrought my havoc.

I ended six seconds of gravity-mocking acrobatics by coming down on the lid in the middle of the room, shooting down into hole and the half-dozen spideroids clinging there, while the big one hanging under the durasteel lid slowly fell off Chalice, where she'd punched through the fused metal join and plunged into its brain.

I scanned the room once more, didn't find anything sitting in the corners, and vivic fire was already fast at work.

I had a lot of nexals to pick up quickly. ”Room is ready for you,” I told them, quirking a smile at what they were probably saying on their private channel. I shook out my hair to its full length, and strands of auburn-turned-gold began to snake in every direction as I made a quick tour of the room. I kept the sight of them out of my eyes as my locks plunged into dead spiders, wound about nexals, pulled them out, and deposited them into my Masspack, flinging off the gore as they did.

And bounty money for each of these things, too! This was going to be profitable for me. I was Visual File countingand sizing each of them, of course...

”Going down,” I said, as I heard their quiet, but not silent, arrival. They would have to open the door, anyways. I stepped into the opening on the plate in the middle of the floor, and dropped down.

----

Soulclaws on my feet cleared the way, burning through the shadowy webs, sliding down the wall to the side, dragging my weight and allowing me to hit the floor in something resembling quiet and no vibrations.

The nearest spideroids outside the room were beyond my Tremble for the moment. I eyed the burning corpses tangled in the webs being set afire above, sighed, pulled out my Disk, and began to bounce and ascend back up the shaft, cutting the bodies free before they fell so as to land on the Disk, and not disturb anything below.

Wap, wap, wap, wap, fat spideroid corpses landed atop one another, balanced precariously. The smell of death was being eaten away by the vivus, so that wouldn't betray us for now, and I cemented them all with the biggest one that had been clinging under the lotus lock, before descending quickly.

Might have taken out all their nexals while doing that, too, shhhhh...

Once on the ground, I shoved all the corpses off to a dark corner to burn away unwhite, and as the lads up top reached the half-door and worked on opening it, I peeked out at the spideroids beyond.

The view really hadn't changed yet, still spideroids everywhere, still lots of webs, going on and on and on into the distance. Nothing was really creeping in this direction, so I hadn't been noticed, and could just sit in the shadows and watch what was going on, better than a drone camera.

The boys got the door open manually, squeezed on through, looked at all the burning spideroids around up there, and made their way down the steps as quietly as possible to the slidelock up above. Peering over the edge, they could see me at the corner down below, watching everything.

”Are you going to be safe down there, Agent Rantha?” the sergeant asked in coms.

”Oh, I sure hope not. I'd urge you to come down here, but that's in direct opposition to your mission directive. I can use my Disk to bring two of you down, but evacuation protocols mean bringing down more is unwise. The only way you could do more is if that cover was open, which would be a security no-no.